Before the dawn of the iron age, ancient humans had but one source of workable iron for their artifacts and weapons: meteorites. In this very-metal episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss various examples of meteoric metal artifacts, including several precious sky-weapons of antiquity.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two in our series on human uses of metal from the Sky. If you haven't heard the first episode yet, you should go back and check that one out before you listen to this. But in that episode brief recap, we focused mostly on a specific artifact from the New Kingdom of Egypt, which was a dagger found wrapped up with the mummy of the pharaohtutan Common, which had a blade made of iron. Now that might not sound remarkable, but this was a blade made of iron from an era before the large scale smelting of iron in Egypt. And the really cool thing about this knife and many other iron artifacts from before the regional iron age in Egypt is that they were probably created out of iron that came from a meteorite space metal. So we also discuss the history of knowledge that meteorites come from space, including the story of how European scientists came to generally agree on the cosmic origin of meteorite rocks only around the beginning of the nineteenth century or so. And then also some interesting evidence that the ancient Egyptians did actually know that iron meteorites came from space, for example, the way they referred to iron as the iron of the sky or the metal of the sky, and some other linguistices clues in the way the glyphs of the Hieroglyphic language are put together. And then there are also some other languages like Sumerian, which have long had similar associations between iron or certain types of iron, and the sky. And so today we're back to talk about more examples of the use of metal from space inhuman artifacts, in human technological history.
That's right, And where we're going to go next, We're going to get back into the use of iron and meteoric iron in meteorites in Chinese tradition, Chinese history, and maybe just a little dash of Chinese mythology. I want to refer back to a write up on iron that appears in the seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World by Brian and Fagan. With this particular bit by Paul T. Kratick, cratic sums up Chinese iron usage by pointing out that iron production in China began around the ninth century BCE, perhaps introduced from the West, but also just as likely an independent invention, and that by the Han period to go to BCE, the Chinese quote incontestably led the world in iron technology and production. But of course, as with these other examples we've been looking at, we do have evidence of artifacts created with meteoric iron prior to this. Specifically it takes us back to the Sheng dynasty. This would have been around fourteen hundred BCE. Now, as we previously mentioned, there of course has been some back and forth on the testing of various pre Iron age iron artifacts, and ultimately a lot of that is still going on, and these blades are often mentioned in some of those documents. Now in that paper that I credited in the last episode from Albert Jambond twenty seventeensh Bronze age iron meteoretic or not a chemical strategy, at least according to this source, the nickel count is low in these examples, but not low enough to assign terrestrial origin, and that this is definitely a case it seems like where the lower nickel content is likely due to weathering effects. The blades themselves have long been discussed as probable examples of meteoric iron, going back at least as far as the book two Early Chinese bronz Weapons with Meteoritic iron Blades by gettens at All in nineteen seventy one, which details that these blades were found in nineteen thirty one in Anyang Hanan within a single tomb, which is also cited in Metals in Antiquity by young at All nineteen ninety nine. Now I have a picture here of these artifacts here for you to look at, Joe and everyone else. You can look these up as well online. Just look for meteoric iron Chinese axes or Chinese broad axes and you can likely find images of this. You can tell that these were ornate, highly stylized weapons. Now, I want to note that both of these sources here that are talking about it, they seem to indicate less than certainty in some of the details, saying that there seems to be a lot of believe to have been in these references. Though, to be clear, these weapons have long been in the Freer collection at the Smithsonian, and there's no indication that the dating or a larger geographic origin is particularly endowed here. I just couldn't help it pick up on the fact that this is one of those accounts where there seem to be a little bit of ambiguity but no real sticking points. I think in trying to understand where these came from. These would have been Chinese broad axes, formally inlaid and again likely largely ceremonial. These are not weapons that would be out on the battlefield. Ah.
Yeah, and I had been assuming the same was true of Tuton Common's iron dagger, though in fact I guess I don't have a way of knowing that for sure, don't have a reason to suspect to use this for knife dueling or anything.
Yeah, it's interesting to think about these examples in terms of how do you use it right, because you know, we have cases where you're going to have some sort of an iron weapon that is going to be of exceptional quality, but you're going to have so few of them, maybe even just one. You know, what are you going to do during the Bronze period with your iron weapon. It's kind of like if, as a thought experiment, you were to say, okay, what if I were to take a lightsaber back to the one hundred Years War between England and France during the fourteenth and fifteenth century, and you gave it to one side or the other, you know, what good is it going to do? You know, you could make a case maybe for some sort of special forces style use of the weapon by either party. Okay, single combat, sure, but more likely than not, a single lightsaber is not going to decide anything during the fourteenth or fifteenth century in any kind of like warfare scenario. It would make far more sense as a ritual object, as a tool of propaganda, is essentially like a scepter to show how special and or powerful you are.
And as we talked about last time, with the specific case of iron versus the dominant medal of bronze, there's not even really a clear material superiority of early iron weapons over say, well made bronze ones of the period. That the advantages of iron when moving into the Iron Age were primarily advantages in terms of economics and the sourcing of materials, that it was easier to produce lots of iron implements and tools and weapons at scale, rather than it being that iron is just a much better metal or something.
Right right, And the other key point, as we discussed in the last episode is the knowledge of where the meteorc iron came from, like knowing that this weapon is of heavenly origin or of cosmic origin and so forth, that seems to often be really important. And so I'm going to get into that question here with Chinese examples. Turning first back to Gettings at All, the work to early Chinese bronze weapons with iron blades from seventy one. They point out that meteorite falls were known to the ancient Chinese and discussed in literature, often in reference to portents. So if the metal used was known to have come from the sky, they contend, it would have added to the auspiciousness of the weapons and the reason that the iron was used in these cases instead of jade, which typically occupied an elevated position of ceremonial importance for weapons and so forth. Such usage may have also influenced known Chinese meteorite fragments. Quote such a use of meteoritic iron might also explain the fact that only one iron meteorite find is known from China. This I is referring to, you know, ancient examples of meteorite, the idea being that the iron meteorites would have been known as a source for this sort of metal and would have been used as such. And certainly these are not the only known examples of Chinese meteoric weapons or weapons or artifacts that are believed or it's argued, may be made of such iron. There are several known artifacts of possible meteoric iron from the late Sheng and early Western Zoo. So for examples of some of those observations, because they mentioned, okay, the ancient Chinese knew about meteorites. They knew they came from the sky. For some examples of this knowledge, I turned to the nineteen ninety four paper Meteorite Falls in China and some Related Human Casualty Events by Yao at All, published in the journal Meteoritics. They looked at accounts from roughly seven hundred BCE through nineteen twenty CE, with the earliest account cited found in the Spring and Autumn Annals, traditionally attributed to Confucius, would have historically lived around five fifty one through four to seventy nine BCE. This work is one of the five classics of ancient Chinese literature, and it covers an historical period stretching from seven twenty two to for eighty one BCE, and the work includes coverage of a six forty five BCE event in which quote in translation, of course, five stones fell in Sung And there are various other accounts in this article that they don't highlight all of them, but they highlights some of historic. Note there is a Sey dynasty account. This is from the work History of the Suy Dynasty, and it refers to a six sixteen BCE meteorite, with the account depicting a meteorite hitting a siege tower during the besiegement of a walled city.
What.
Yeah, So the idea is that there's a you know, a siege situation going on, a meteorite hits, takes out the siege tower, causes the sea, and then either the strike of the meteorite or the perhaps far more likely the subsequent collapse of said siege tower results in I believe I read possibly ten fatalities. That was their I think the recorded number. If this is true, it might stand as the earliest recorded human meteorite related fatality. These are, of course rare. You're talking about situations where you know, a meteorite hits somebody or hits the vicinity of a human and in doing so results in a casualty. But it's also not entirely clear. I've read some criticism of this account saying, Okay, this is certainly possible, it would be a very rare occurrence. It's we also have to just acknowledge that it's possible that this siege tower was taken out by something far more mundane, like human munitions fired from the wall of the siege city, that sort of thing. But it is kind of It is cataloged in the historic records, so I've seen numerous texts acknowledge it and say, well, perhaps this is true.
Yeah.
So hundreds of accounts follow these early accounts of meteorites and the Chinese records, and I'm not going to go through all of them, or even the ones listed in this source. But there's one more I wanted to mention here because it does line up with what we're talking about and the subject of meteors and iron, and that is the non meteorite shower of thirteen forty one. It's notable because it seems to have been a shower of iron meteorites, and it was even referred to as quote the iron rain, with descriptions of the resulting bore holes in the earth, matching up with what we know of iron meteorite impacts today now thirteen forty one, of course, is far outside the Bronze Age examples we're looking at, but you know, you conbind this with certainly these much earlier examples, and it does seem clear that the ancient Chinese knew that meteorites came from above, they came from the sky, and that alone would be enough to sort of factor into these myth making understandings of what a weapon forged of such iron would mean. By the way, speaking of Chinese mythology, it's worth noting that You the Great, the character that we've talked about on the show before, founder of the shop of the dynasty, in myth and legend, the bringer of flood controls, is sometimes, at least at least in early Chinese mythology, connected to meteorites. Oh so, according to Mark Edward Lewis, in the Mythology of Early China, some texts say that you was born of a stone or in a place named for a stone, while other tellings state that quote his mother was inseminated by a magical stone or meteor.
Oh interesting, this is a different way of sort of like parenthood by the gods.
Yeah, yeah, so I had not run across this before. I cross checked it in a couple of my go to Chinese mythology sources Yang and in Turner's Chinese Mythology and Burrel's work on Chinese mythology. Both of these texts, I refer to an origin story for you by which he's born from the belly of his father's corpse following the said father's execution. And this I'm guessing this entirely masculine birth as a Buryl describes it. I guess this is the predominant origin story that comes later, and that Lewis here is focusing primarily on early tellings before those traditions emerged.
Oh okay, I see.
So anyway, these axes, among other artifacts, you know, another example of an ancient Bronze Age culture having access to meteoric iron using it to craft weapons that then have an exalted place within their culture. Uh, and so, And definitely look up images of this if you have the ability to do so readily, because you can you know they're they're they're not in priestine form, they haven't been restored or anything like that they're not anywhere near the the completeness of tut and Commons dagger, but you can still get a sense of the majesty they would have had.
Yeah, even the stubs are beautiful. Okay. I want to talk about a statue, specifically a metal sculpture allegedly from Tibet, sometimes called the Iron Man, referred to in a lot of media reports as as the Iron Man or sometimes as the Space Buddha.
Well, these these, both, these descriptions both take you somewhere, that's for sure.
So this statue weighs about ten point six kilograms or about twenty three pounds, and is roughly twenty four centimeters or about nine and a half inches tall. It is made of iron, and it depicts a bearded male figure that is sometimes referred to as a Buddha, sometimes referred to as a god, sometimes referred to as a man. But he is depicted wearing trousers, a sort of cape or cloak that's joined over his shoulders in a knot on his chest. He's wearing kind of almost kind of cloglike looking shoes, pants with a split in the cuff at the bottom of the pant legs, and what looks to me kind of like scale armor over his mid section. And then on that scale armor there is the symbol of a swastika, which, remember, before it was appropriated by the German Nazi Party, that was around nineteen twenty, it was, for you know, injuries or even millennia, a traditional symbol with positive associations in a lot of different cultures and religions throughout the world, notably in Hinduism and Buddhism.
That's right, and it still has that status in various Hindu and Buddhist traditions, though of course permanently ruined in the West by the appropriation of the Nazi Party.
Yeah, and so in the iron Man statue, the figure has a halo like disc behind his head and he is clutching a round egg shaped object in one hand. His legs are folded underneath his body, so he looks like he could be sitting cross legged or perhaps even dancing. But this whole thing is carved out of a solid piece of metal, with a rough, unfinished base below the figure. So what is the deal with this weird metal statue. Well, there was a bunch of media about this statue way back in twenty twelve, it was associated with the publication of a paper that was looking into its physical makeup and its origins. The paper was by Buckner at All, published in the journal Media Critics and Planetary Science again in twenty twelve, and it was called Buddha from Space, an ancient object of art made of a China iron media write fragment. So I'm going to start with what was originally alleged by it, but keep in mind that some of the information I'm going to say at first is either not certain or almost certainly not true. The lead author of this paper, Elmer Buckner, is a geologist affiliated with the Planetology Institute at Stuttgart University, and so the authors of this paper were looking into the question of first of all, what this statue is made of, but also what does it depict and where did it come from? As to where it comes from, there again is plenty of debate about this, but the story as received by the authors of the paper goes like this. In the years nineteen thirty eight and nineteen thirty nine, Adolf Hitler's SS sponsored a research and propaganda expedition to Tibet. This is kind of a famous famous expedition about which there has been much cultural legend, but this expedition was led by the German zoologist and explorer Ernst Schaeffer. This expedition collected a lot of material for return to Germany. So they took a bunch of plant and animal samples, seeds and grains and plants, and they cataloged birds. There was ornithology missions and stuff like that, and it also took a lot of cultural artifacts, including, according to a Triple As blog post about this paper by Stephen A. Edwards quote, a robe believed to have been worn by the Dali Lama, a gold coin, and the iron statue. The latter apparently attracted the attention of the Nazis because of a swastika carved into its center. So that's the story about where it came from. What does appear to be true is that the statue was in the possession of a private collector from sometime unknown until the year two thousand and seven, which is the same year these authors began investigating it. But before then, the allegation is that it was taken from Tibet by Schaffer's men in the late thirties and then disappeared during World War II, only to reappear to the public in the two thousands.
All right.
Now, as to the question of what the statue is made of, the authors conducted an elemental analysis and found that the concentration of elements present in the metal was consistent with an iron meteorite. So much like the analysis we talked about in the previous episode looking at King Tut's dagger, here they found high concentrations of nickel. This statue was approximately sixteen percent nickel by weight and about zero point six percent cobalt. These are not ratios you would expect to find in earth based iron. Earth based iron extracted from before the eighteen hundreds tends to be not more than about four percent nickel. Also, the authors analyzed the ratios of trace platinum group metals and found that these were also consistent with meteorite iron. Not only that they were able to match this metal to the composition of meteorites from a specific known impact area. They write, quote, the geochemical data of the meteorite generally matched the element values known from fragments of the chinga a tax site, A tax site meaning ungrouped iron meteorite strewn field discovered in nineteen thirteen. The provenance of the meteorite as well as the piece of art strongly points to the border region of eastern Siberia and Mongolia. Accordingly, and I went and did a little more looking. So it seems that the Chinga meteorite is sort of it's an area rather than one specific object. The Chinga meteorite field is something that contains fragments of meteorite found by gold miners in Tuva, which is a region of southern Siberia in Russia near the border with Mongolia, and the hundreds of meteorite fragments found there are thought to result from an object that exploded in the atmosphere over Tuva between ten and twenty thousand years ago. So the scientific evidence that the iron Man statue was made out of meteorite iron seems quite strong. But what about these other questions? What does this statue depict? And when was when and where was it made? Here's where we start getting into the much more disputed territory. The authors of this twenty twelve paper claimed that it was likely a depiction of the warrior king, god and wealth Buddha known as vice Ravana, who is the guardian of the North. You can think of sort of heavenly beings that are guard ardians of the cardinal directions, and Viceravana is the guardian of the North. This figure, Viceravanna, shares characteristics with the Hindu deity known as Kubera and is also known as Jambala, sometimes shown carrying a lemon or a money bag in his hand, and in other depictions, especially earlier ones, the authors say that Viceravana is shown as quote, a corpulent figure that holds a mongoose which spews jewels from its mouth. Sometimes also, especially beginning in the second half of the eighth century, they say, he is shown with ghosts at his feet. So, due to a number of visual motifs such as the crossed legs and the scale armor and so forth, the authors believe that this is Viceravana we're looking at. But they also write their thoughts about the religious significance of the swastika in the image. They say, quote, the swastika prominently displayed on the cuirass of the sculpture was a symbol frequently used is by the nature based pre Buddhist Bun religion rooted in the western parts of Tibet. The Bun religion had its own literature and art that was, they say, continuously absorbed into the Tibetan Buddhism that propagated into the entire area of Buddhist influence. A paper I'm going to talk about in a minute, I think will somewhat dispute that claim. But they say, accordingly, the iron Man could represent a Bun slash Buddhist hybrid, showing some recognition features of Kubera the early Vicerovana.
O good, all right, and not getting into the criticism is about to come. That would seemingly make sense. We can point in various examples, not only in Buddhist traditions, but in other traditions where we see these emerging of art styles and merging of cultures in a particular sculpture or other work.
Sure, and so going with this hybrid art hypothesis, they write, quote, according to this interpretation, the possible provenance of the iron Man is western Tibet or anywhere in the area of Buddhist influence, and the age can be tentatively dated at the eighth to tenth century. Now, as far as I can tell, the chemical analysis that they did appears sound. I've not come across major criticism of the analysis of the materials. So the statue is probably made of meteorite iron, perhaps even from the known source of the Chinga meteorite field, but the question of its cultural origin I found to be strongly disputed. So there is a professor of Buddhist studies named Akim Beher that could be Beayer or Bayer. I'm not sure. I'm going to say Beyer. Apologies if that's wrong. Behar, who was at one point affiliated with Dunguk University in Soul, South Korea. He may be at a different institution now, addressed these claims in an article that I found called the Lama Wearing Trousers Notes on an iron statue in a German private collection. And here's where the story, I think becomes even more interesting, because, of course, any statue or sculpture made out of a meteorite, that's inherently a pretty fascinating idea. But it goes beyond that, because it calls up questions of the authenticity of art and our ability to recognize what we're looking at when we're looking for cultural authentics and forgeries and fakes. In this paper, Behar does not dispute the meteorite origin of the iron, but argues that the statue is not authentically Tibetan or Mongolian and bear's clear and well known hallmarks of European imitations of Tibetan art. In other words, instead of being a eight to tenth century Tibetan religious sculpture made out of iron from space, it is a modern European forgery made out of iron from space, or perhaps not forgery, perhaps just imitation. I guess to decipher the difference between forgery and imitation, maybe you would need to know the intent of the artist.
Yeah, yeah, I would imagine so, But as we've been saying that that would appear to be lost to history, so all we can do is offer conjecture.
So Beyer says that at the time of his writing in response to this paper and the media that followed it, no authority on Tibetan or Mongolian art had ever publicly authenticated the sculpture. So basically, from his point of view, I think he's saying like, there's not even really anybody within the relevant field to disagree with about this. It's just clearly not authentic. And he goes on to list thirteen stylistic elements of the sculpture that make it overwhelmingly clear to him that it is a fake. I'm not going to go through all thirteen, but I wanted to mention a couple in detail, and then I can just allude to the rest. So one example that even looked weird to me. I am not claiming to be an expert on Tibetan or Buddhist art. I don't really know anything about it. But I looked at the statue and I was like, huh, the shoes look weird, and what do you know? So he identifies as this very first item on the list the footwear. He writes, quote, the lama is neither barefoot, nor does he wear traditional boots. The shoes cover the feet like European shoes up to the ankles, and no further. And Rob, I've got a zoom in for us to look at here of the shoes on the image. Again, they do look weird to me. I'm not saying what looks weird to me should be decisive on this issue. I just thought it was funny that they did look weird to me. So after I read this comment by Bear, I went around looking for other images of vice Ravana in Buddhist art and other images of just figures from Tibetan art, and yeah, I do. I don't really see shoes that look like this. I either see like bare feet or boots that go up the calf.
Yeah. I had a similar experience after I read this in your notes. I have a copy of Roberty Fisher's Art of Tibet that I've used in research projects before, so I got that out I started looking through it. That book, by the way, does not cover this particular statue or mention it as far as I could tell, but it has a lot of illustrations. So I scan through it, and I don't know. I had an odd experience, Like I love looking at t bett and art. I love the complexity and all the rich information that is contained within some you know that becomes apparent to someone like me, But a lot of it is just lost on me, as I am not its historic contended viewer. But it is almost I found it almost physically painful to look at each of these amazing images and focus not on anything else going on in them, but to look at the feet and the shoes. There are some images where feet are seemingly very important, and so it's not like feet or just a non commodity in these images, but there's just so much going on that I had a hard time looking at just the feet.
Yeah, there was some series we did a while back where we talked about, you know, and there's variation within all art styles, but we talked about how a lot of Tibetan art is just gloriously busy. There's like so much going on in it, and so much text here.
Yeah, and it is if memory serves from those past episodes. Like part of it comes down to, of course, you have a very complex theology that needs to be related to some degree through these visual representations. And then also there's a strong case to be made that the landscape plays into it, that there is a kind of scale to the Tibetan landscape that therefore makes these interior holy spaces need to be busier, need to be just so full of additional details and without any of these you know, artistic voids that become important in other traditions. But anyway, I looked at a lot of feet in these when I could see them, and because it seemed like most of the examples just broadly feet on all art. You know, it's either going to be a barefoot or it is going to be a feet you cannot see because they are obscured by clothing. And I, in fact, I don't think I saw a single shoe in that particular book. I also went to a rather prolific blog online of of Himalayan Buddhist art titled It's you can find It's Himalayan Buddhist Art dot WordPress dot com. A lot of images on there, with some some write ups. It seems to be a very current blog. I looked around on there, and in fact, and there I found I found lots of bare feet, and I did find at least one example of a couple of examples maybe a footwear, one of which, though is clearly, like you said, a boot that goes, you know, much much farther up the leg, as opposed to what we see in the alleged iron Man here. And so like you, now, when I look at the iron Man's feet, I'm like, this is this feels off? Like it feels even more off now that I have all this additional information in my head about it. They you know, they look like, I don't know, kind of like little elfin shoes I don't know exactly.
Yeah, but again it's not just our opinion. Expert on Buddhism and Tibetan art says, this is not what this usually looks like. Bear's next point points out the pants. This guy's wearing pants, and he says, this is sort of a dead giveaway that the trousers worn by the lama in this sculpture are to be found nowhere else in Tibetan or Mongolian sculpture of the time, in which figures may wear robes or might have armor covering their shins, but never pants like this. And even there's kind of this interesting like what would you call this a flare or I guess like a split. There's like a split in the pant leg down at the cuff. And yeah, Behar is like, I don't know what to make of that. Maybe that's just to make it look sort of different than normal pants, like pastoral or something.
Yeah, yeah, most of these images you look at Yeah you're looking at it flowing robes and so forth or armor. Yeah. I was looking around too for examples of what we might describe as pants, and I was not finding them.
So then Bear goes on the list eleven other points of difference from known Tibetan or Mongolian art, having to do with everything from the way the body is positioned, like the position of the legs, to how body parts such as the beard and the hands are rendered. There are major differences there. How the halo is depicted. I want to come right back to that, and then things about the clothing and the jewelry. Just a lot of stuff about this does not fit with the alleged context it supposedly comes from. So the part about the halo was also in me given that we did a series of episodes on halo imagery a couple of years ago. Bayer says that halo's attached to the body like I actually attached to the body on the sculpture are not very common in genuine metal statues here, if they have a halo, tends to be like a separate piece from the body in the sculpture, But then also notes that the halo around the figure's head and then the greater ariole or behind the figure's body are totally blank and featureless circles.
Here.
I did a little digging deeper on this, and I found another paper zooming in and showing maybe there are a few little scratches and the halo if you zoom in, but there's no major decoration or adornment. And if you compare this to how halo's or arioles, you know, the glow around the head or the glow around the body, how they're usually depicted in Tibetan or Buddhist art, it's a world of difference. They are usually not a blank circle. They are usually highly textured, highly adorned, like we were saying, very busy, with a lot going in them, maybe depicted as flames or having a kind of texture within them, or showing even little like scenes and figures inside them.
Yeah. I think this feels like a strong point. Yeah, that this halo feels way too casual. Yeah, and probably has more in common with Western depictions of a halo, you know.
Yeah, looks more like a halo you'd see around the head of a saint in like a medieval Catholic depiction or something. Yeah. Yeah, So there is a bunch of stuff like this that just does not match the cultural context of its alleged production and on the art elements, Behar says, quote, my own research has not yielded a single even remotely similar object, which led me to conclude that the statue is in fact a European counterfeit, and I was encouraged to take this conclusion by several colleagues I contacted. While no such artifacts exist in Inner Asia, artifacts of the pseudo Tibetan style exist in abundance, produced as home decoration for film sets and the like. Any highly improbable claim to the opposite would have to carry the burden of proof. So having made the case that this is a European imitation rather than a genuine Tibetan or Mongolian original, the paper also addresses some other questions, including who is depicted in the sculpture and where it comes from. As to who is depicted, Bear agrees actually that it might possibly be Vice Sravana, which is what the original authors proposed, but then also give some other possibilities. Maybe it is Podmasimbava, there was another figure. It could be an amalgam of elements from different original figures. And then there's the question of where did it come from. Bear also here casts doubt on the story that this was taken from Tibet by by the Nazi Schaffer expedition. In the late thirties. He claims that after corresponding with the authors of the twenty twelve study, he could find no reliable evidence that this piece had any historical association with Schaffer or with the SS. I could be wrong, but as best I can tell, the evidence for the association is the claim of the collector who produced it in the two thousands. But that came with no like historical evidence backing it up or no reliable documentation. So Bayer doubts the Schaffer connection totally.
So this might have just been a story that was heaped on, perhaps just to make it a little more marketable to.
Collectors possibly, and that could in fact work in two different ways. He identifies two different hypotheses for the production of this. One is that it's a He calls it something produced for the quote general antique and curio market, in which case the oustica depicted on the armor and the association with the Schaffer expedition would just like sort of give it more general mystery, be like wow, that's weird, and be attractive to a general antique buying audience or curio buying audience. But then he says there's another interpretation, which is a little more sinister, which is that it is made specifically to appeal to the market for Nazi memorabilia, in which case these associations would would have a specific direct appeal. So who did make it, Beyer says, we don't know, but he thinks that most likely it was made by a European artist sometime roughly between nineteen ten and nineteen seventy. Why those dates, The reasoning seems to be that this would be a period when there was a market for this sort of thing, for artifacts imitating Tibetan styles or things to be passed off as Tibetan in origin. But there was also still before nineteen seventy enough ignorance within the market for this sort of art that something of this quality could be passed off as authentic. He says, after around nineteen seventy, quote, more details of original Tibetan art gained wide dissipation, so probably the market would be more aware of like that this would not pass muster. So from Bear's perspective, we don't know what happened for sure, but it seems possible that it was something like a piece of meteorite iron from the Chinga meteorite field in Tuva again that southern Siberia somehow gets transported to Germany, where sometime in the twentieth century, maybe between like nineteen ten and nineteen seventy roughly, it is partially forged and carved into a statue made to crudely imitate Tibetan art, and then from there it passes into a collector's market with this story behind it, with this alleged link to the Schaffer expedition, and then he wraps up the article by sort of discussing the importance of consulting Pece in the relevant fields before go before you know, going public with claims of authenticity. So of course I'm you know, I'm not qualified to adjudicate this matter either, but I would tend to take the word of people who specialize in Tibetan art in evaluating whether something is authentically Tibetan art or not. And he says, basically, any specialist in Tibetan or Buddhist art could have looked at this and said this is not authentic. And it's still an interesting story with that additional context as well, because so like a European forgery of Buddhist art imbued with a mysterious Nazi backstory, which is in fact made out of iron from a Siberian meteorite. How does that happen?
Yeah, it's still this enigma, isn't it, even if it's not the enigma that some tellings would make it out to be.
But that's not all. There is one more development in this story that I came across. So in the year twenty seventeen, age German historian of Tibet named Israun Engelhart published an article called the Strange Case of the Buddha from Space. And in this piece, Engelhart gives extensive reasons, first of all, for thinking the sculpture was not brought back to Germany from Tibet by the expedition in the late nineteen thirties, which that expedition she had actually studied in great depth. For one thing, the members of the SS expedition actually made meticulous catalogs of the items but they brought back from Tibet, and the iron statue is not listed among them. But Engelhart in this paper also documents her attempts to track down the ownership history of the Iron Man, and these efforts are somewhat successful and they end up, pointing her back to a sort of aggressively negotiating antiquities dealer from Russia. Going off that information, Engelhart eventually reaches the conclusion to the sculpture was probably somehow associated with a known historical figure. That it was probably associated with and perhaps made for the strange Russian artist Nikolai Rarick, that spelled Roe r Nikolai Rarick, who lived from eighteen seventy four to nineteen forty seven. Rareck, in his career, traveled extensively in Central Asia and was obsessed with the Himalayas and with Tibet, and there are many portraits of him posed in Tibetan garb and with Tibetan surroundings. He's wearing Tibetan robes. In nineteen twenty six, Rareck produced a sketch that Engelhart came across, and the sketch is entitled the Order of rigden Yeppo, and the sketch really looks a lot like the Iron Man statue. There's a similar posture and pose, a similar double halo, similar pointed hat, similar clothing, and a note about the title there that Rarek understood riggdan Jeppo as the name of a figure meant to be the future ruler of a spiritual kingdom known as Chambala in Tibetan Buddhism, and further writing about the comparisons between the iron man statue and the sketch and eventually the painting produced by Rerek unknown as the order of Riggdan yeppo engel Heart writes quote, the left hand of both the sketch and the statue seems to hold neither a mongoose nor a vase, but rather the famous radiant Centamani stone, the wish fulfilling jewel coming from the Sky, which Rarec painted several times. In nineteen twenty three, when the Rarecks were in Paris, they received a mysterious package through dubious channels that allegedly contained this very stone, said to be a fragment of a meteorite. And apparently Rarick and his wife Elena, who was Elena was very into the mystical religious movement then known as Theosophy. They got really excited about the meteorite stone and believed it have great significance for their lives. Apparently Rareck had long had thoughts like imagined himself as carrying around a magic stone that had some kind of like potency and meaning for his fate, but anyway, Motivated in part by their theosophical beliefs, Nikolay and Elena attempted to lead an expedition in the nineteen twenties to find Shambala in the in Tibet, to find the entrance to Shambala, and not only that, but Nikolai would eventually come to see himself and to style himself as rig Danneppo, the King of Shambala, and so he had like ceremonial robes and other trappings of this station created befitting his kingly destiny. Apparently, his claim to be the king of Shambala did not go over amazingly well with the Tibetans, and ultimately the expedition was considered a failure. Rareck got incredibly mad at Tibet and at Buddhism after this and published a bunch of nasty things about them. But coming back to the statue, where did the statue come from? Engelhart argues, based on a number of clues, that it's quite likely that Rereck had this statue made out of meteorite iron around nineteen twenty six to nineteen twenty seven in order to represent himself as the King of Shambala, and that's why it bears these similarities to the sketch and the painting that he did of himself in this posture. And this would have probably been done by a metal worker somewhere in Urga, the capital of Mongolia today known as ulan Batar, and this would have been while the Rareks were staying there in preparation for their expedition to bet So I think we would need more like physical evidence to make the link for sure, But I think it's good detective work, and engle Heart makes a makes a really strong case, circumstantial case based on the similarities of the artworks and themes that we know that Raheric and Rarek and his family were very interested in. So it seems quite plausible to me. Anyway. I think that'll do it for today's episode on the Iron from Space, But I feel like we've got more to talk about with this subject now, Rob. I think you've got an interview scheduled to run on Tuesday of next week, right, But can we come back with part three of this discussion on Thursday?
Absolutely? Yeah, we have more examples of potential meteoric iron artifacts to discuss and more related topics. So we'll come back for a part three on Thursday, with an interview episode airing on Tuesday that's not related.
To this topic.
Sounds great, can't wait in the meantime, certainly right in. If you have thoughts on the alleged iron man, well, I mean, I guess the iron part is not alleged. It's a man. He's made out of iron. He is iron man. No one can doubt that. We can't take that away from him. But if you have thoughts on that, or if you have thoughts on Chinese artifacts in Chinese mythology right in, we'd love to hear from you. Also, if there are other examples from other cultures that we haven't covered so far, bring them up, because we do have a few things lined up to discuss. But if you get us in time, you might be able to we might be able to add it to the list, or if it comes in after the fact, perhaps it's something we can discuss on our listener Mail episodes. Our listener Mail episodes publish on Mondays and The Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
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